Amazon Overview

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We are driven by the excitement of building technologies, inventing products, and providing services that ... Read more

Mission: Our mission is to be Earth's most customer-centric company. Our actions, goals, projects, programs, and inventions begin and end with the customer top of mind.

You'll also hear us say that at Amazon, it's ... Read more

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The Proust Questionnaire was popularized by Marcel Proust, who believed that an individual will reveal their true nature in answering these questions. We put this to the test with Sandy Carter, the VP of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQUm8

We've all heard about startups like Netflix and Airbnb that came of age on AWS ( Amazon Web Services), and became major forces reinventing their industries. As Vice President of EC2 Windows (Elastic Compute Cloud service that offers users flexible, scalable compute capacity for Microsoft applications), Sandy Carter is helping drive adoption of AWS technologies among enterprises.

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The Proust Questionnaire was popularized by Marcel Proust, who believed that an individual will reveal their true nature in answering these questions. We put this to the test with Sandy Carter, the VP of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. http://glassdoor.com/slink.htm?key=vQUmz

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Amazon – Why Work For Us?

What do a Customer Service Team Lead, Senior Technical Program Manager, and Innovations Process Assistant have in common? They’re a few of the hundreds of thousands of employees who spend their days focused on customers.

Wherever you are in your career exploration, Amazon likely has an opportunity for you. Our research scientists and engineers shape the future of natural language understanding with Alexa. Fulfillment center associates around the globe send customer orders from our warehouses to doorsteps. Product managers set feature requirements, strategy, and marketing messages for brand new customer experiences. And as we grow, we’ll add jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

At Amazon, we don’t wait for the next big idea to present itself. We envision the shape of impossible things and then we boldly make them reality. So far, this mindset has helped us achieve some incredible things. Let’s build new systems, challenge the status quo, and design the world we want to live in. We believe the work you do here will be the best work of your life.

It’s Always Day 1

At Amazon, it’s always “Day 1.” Now, what does this mean and why does it matter? It means that our approach remains the same as it was on Amazon’s very first day – to make smart, fast decisions, stay nimble, invent, and stay focused on delighting our customers. In our 2016 shareholder letter, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shared his thoughts on how to keep up a Day 1 company mindset. “Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight,” he wrote. “A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen.” You can read the full letter here.

Our Leadership Principles

Our Leadership Principles help us keep a Day 1 mentality. They aren’t just a pretty inspirational wall hanging. Amazonians use them, every day, whether they’re discussing ideas for new projects, deciding on the best solution for a customer’s problem, or interviewing candidates. To read through our Leadership Principles from Customer Obsession to Bias for Action, visit https://www.amazon.jobs/principles.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Amazon, we pride ourselves on our peculiar culture. We honor and respect the differences that each Amazonian brings, and we seek to include those perspectives in our solutions for our global customer base. We also seek to build the diverse community of creators and developers who we are proud to call customers.

Our Affinity Groups bring employees together across businesses and geographies. With executive and company sponsorship, these groups play an important role in building internal networks for career development, advising Amazon business units, leading in service projects, participating in policy discussions, and reaching out to communities where Amazonians live and work. Since 2016, enrollment in Amazon’s affinity groups has more than doubled in more than 90 chapters worldwide.

Our application and interview process differs from role to role, but the main ways we get to know you are through your online application, phone interviews, and in-person interviews. Here are some helpful tips for the interview process:

Amazon uses behavioral-based interviewing, which is based on discovering how you think in specific employment-related situations. We want to understand how you solve problems, challenge conventional thinking, and keep projects moving — so we’ll ask you questions that will help us understand why and how you’ve made decisions in the past. The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioral-based interview question by discussing the specific situation, task, action, and result of what you’re describing.

Amazon is a data and metrics-driven company. When you answer questions, keep your focus on the question asked to ensure your answer is solid, and provide examples using metrics or data if applicable. Reference recent situations that showcase your behavior or actions. As much as possible, use work examples that showcase experience, leadership, teamwork, initiative, planning, and customer service.

Our interview process is rooted in our Leadership Principles. Amazonians use them every day. They define our culture and help us delight customers around the world.

At Amazon, we invest in the communities where our employees and customers live. Our contributions can be seen in many ways, and these are just some of our efforts to give back.

Amazon has committed more than $30 million dollars to support homeless families, STEM education, and job training programs in Seattle. Nationally, Amazon has committed more than $60MM to CS and STEM efforts that help students, particularly those who are disadvantaged in today’s society, reach their full potential in the digital age.

In September 2017, Amazon donated $1 million to the American Childhood Cancer Organization, the oldest and largest grassroots childhood cancer organization in the U.S. See Amazon’s efforts to help families face childhood cancer here.

For the last two years, Seattle nonprofit Mary’s Place has sheltered more than 65 families in a former hotel located on Amazon’s campus in the heart for downtown Seattle. Since moving into the building, Mary’s Place has provided more than 120,000 bed nights, served more than 1,000 families – including 2,257 children – provided more than 209,000 meals and helped more than 120 families move into stable housing.

Amazon partnered with Seattle nonprofit FareStart to launch an innovative job training program to help people in entry level foodservice jobs gain additional skills needed to earn a higher income. Amazon is donating space and equipment to help the organization launch a new foodservice apprenticeship program to help people living in poverty obtain higher income jobs. The in-kind donation will also bring five new eateries to Seattle, which will serve as a training ground for the new program.

Additionally, we’ve also worked with Washington DC based Friendship Place, and Boston based St. Mary’s, to provide $1 million dollar donation matching programs in 2017.

At Amazon, we’re constantly looking for ways to further reduce our environmental impact. Get to know our sustainability programs – like Frustration-Free Packaging and wind and solar farms – here.

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As a new college graduate or intern joining Amazon, you can have multiple opportunities to innovate and solve real-world, complex technical and business problems. We have career opportunities available for undergraduates and advanced degree students across the globe with diverse academic backgrounds.

Difficulty 14,843 Ratings

Difficulty

I applied through other source. The process took 4+ months. I interviewed at Amazon (Seattle, WA) in May 2013.

Interview

Called out of the blue, asked if I'd be interested in interviewing. Still not entirely sure how they got my name. Had first phone interview the next week, asked no personal questions, all technical in nature. Total of 3 phone interviews and an in-person trip out to Seattle.

Took about 4 months start to finish. The people in the in person interview were wonderful. Very smart, laid back, and understanding. Got lunch, small tour of campus, and learned what I'd be doing. Got the offer 2 business days after the in person interview.

Sadly, I signed a NDA and I respect the terms of that. As such, I can't give you any specific questions, but I'll gladly give you the best advice I have.

Phone Interviews :

Phone interviews are sucky by nature. Coordinating a call from west to east coast alone is painful, add the fact that phones just take away the benefits of body language, and just make it harder to hear, and you've got a recipe for disaster. But fear not! Here are some helpful hints, some of which are obvious, some of which are not.

1. Get ready ahead of time. I just mean, get to the area you'll be doing the interview beforehand. I'd recommend an hour or more, just to get your nerves ready. Breathe, get used to the surroundings, and get everything laid out ahead of time. Which brings me to...

2. I know it's a "programming" interview, but for the love of all things good, have a pen and paper ready and at your disposal. Bring a backup pen. Much like a printer, the pen will fail at the worst possible time. You may also need a laptop, as I was asked to do "on the fly" programming. But close anything and everything distracting. Speaking of...

3. Pick a spot where there are no distractions. You'll want your undivided attention on this interview. Don't have BookTweet or FaceSpace or MyGram or that crap open if you have a laptop. And I personally wouldn't pick a public space, you never know when an annoying parent will put their screaming child right beside you.

4. Breathe. Just breathe. Take a moment, stretch, and remember you got this. If you have trouble hearing, don't be afraid to ask again. Don't be afraid to say you don't know. Do as for clarifications, and state assumptions up front. Always re-state the problem as you understand it.

As for the content : For the love of God, know what a time complexity is, and how to determine it for any and all code you write. Know the time complexities of all sorts. Know all data structures, how to use them, and properties of each. (Insertion time, deletion, etc) Generally know what heck you're talking about. But don't talk too much. You don't want silence at any point really, but you certainly don't want to let the interviewer not get a word in. Know graph theory, tree theory, and all the fun stuff associated with more "complex" structures. Understand what your language does behind the scenes, as far as GC and compiling go. Know how your language use internal structures to manage the code/objects you write.

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Glassdoor gives you an inside look at what it's like to work at Amazon, including salaries, reviews, office photos, and more. This is the Amazon company profile. All content is posted anonymously by employees working at Amazon.